I’ve always liked books and games since I was a kid. I think it’s because I never really had any friends. After school, it was always off to the latest violin lesson or cram school. So of course, no time for friends. I don’t think my parents had any spare time for me either; it’s hard to spend time with your child when there’s a corporation to manage. My friends were the characters in the books I read and the NPCs in the games I played.
In the sixth grade, things got bad, like real bad. We had to sell the house, the car and we moved to this one bedroom apartment in the Bronx. Things got better, eventually. We weren’t as wealthy as before but we were ok. I was happier but my parents weren’t. I think they missed our old life, especially my mom. They got divorced right before I got into high school.
I wasn’t too bothered by it, I was old enough to know that they did everything they could and would be happier apart. So I got to go to school as a full-time student but surprise surprise, a guy with no social skills since elementary school isn’t going to become Mr. Popular overnight. So I never really let go of my controllers or reading under my covers using the flashlight.
Years passed and as I got older a lot of things changed. I didn’t have to study anymore because I started working at a start-up company. The few kids I knew well enough to greet in the hallway were replaced by coworkers near my cubicle. People came into my life for a short period of time and eventually left. I even got to have a girlfriend at one point.
But there was one thing in my life that never changed: Games.
That was because there was a game I’ve been playing since I was in high school. I found it when I got tired of the stereotypical AAA games. I wanted something unique, something different than the usual games that I'd play. That’s when I found World: Mountain, Sea and Sky or MSS for short. It was a singleplayer soulslike RPG made by an indie company.
The game provided a lot of different starting scenarios and ways to build your character. It also featured a party system with thousands of different NPCs, each with their own unique backstory. It might have been the gamer in me, but I loved the brutal difficulty too. Each time you died, that was it.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
No multiple save files. If you got a Game Over, that was it. You had to start over from the beginning.
Today was a special day and not because it was my 30th birthday. After 14 years of playing, I had finally reached the ending. My character was staring at a portal which would lead to the final boss. I felt confident with this party. I had raised each of these NPCs from the bottom and knew that they wouldn’t betray me unlike the last playthrough.
“Damn, finally. Let’s do this.”
Click. Click, click.
I moved my character to the portal.
A white dialogue box popped up.
｢ Tutorial Complete ｣
｢ Continue? ｣
“That was the prologue? That’s kind of impressive actually.”
Why would I not continue? I was a gamer. No matter what challenge the game threw at me at this point, I would have to face it if I wanted to beat the game. Also I was curious about what kind of Core or items the boss would drop.
I clicked on [Continue] as the game began to load. I wondered if there was a new game+. Most people on the forums didn’t seem to have beaten the game yet. But now that I think about it, there has never been a post about someone beating the game.
“Maybe people just gave up. Or they’re too ashamed to say they beat the game using a Mod to lower the difficulty.”
｢ Welcome to World: Mountain, Sea and Sky ｣
｢ 세계: 산해경으로 환영합니다 ｣
｢ Bienvenia a Mundo: Montaña, Mar y Cielo ｣
｢ 欢迎来到世界: 山海經 ｣
“What the hell?”
My screen started flashing the message in dozens of different languages, some of them familiar and others not. They started scrolling through my screen like how the ending credits are rolled out. They started scrolling down faster, soon becoming illegible. At a certain point they just became a blur on my screen, making it seem like my screen had died.
I waited a bit to see if anything else would happen.
“Don’t tell me you crashed.” I slapped the side of the monitor.
What about the drops from the final boss? What about my ending cinematic that took me fourteen years? Hell, I didn’t even get to see what the final boss looked like. When the game showed me the ‘Prologue Complete’ box, I had already been filled with that same sense of wonder and adventure when I first discovered MSS. Just as I was wondering all these things, the screen turned back on.
｢ Welcome to World: Mountain, Sea and Sky ｣
｢ You are currently the 1,679,583rd [Player] ｣
｢ You are the 1st [Player] from Earth to finish the [TUTORIAL] on [ORIGINAL DIFFICULTY] ｣
｢ Loading… ｣
Then everything went white.
“Fuck! My eyes!”